So I don't know how many of you follow portable gaming news, but this is a neat little title in development by developers 5th Cell, who brought us Drawn to Life, wherein you draw much of the gameworld yourself, and Lock's Quest, which... I actually know very little about, but it apparently reviewed pretty well.

Anyway, Scribblenauts is a puzzle-platformer, with a pretty basic goal: Each stage has a star, and you need to collect it. That's about it. But the way you make that happen is where the real genius of the gameplay lies. Think of something that might help your character progress in the level, write it in, and it shows up in the gameworld. Seriously. The first article I read about this game told of a guy on the dev team whose entire job was to go through dictionaries and pick out all the nouns. I've seen all kinds of things demonstrated in videos; tools, foodstuffs, animals, dinosaurs, vehicles, mythical beasts, and even internet memes. This game seems to have a nearly inexhaustible amount of imaginative potential. It's the sort of thing I can see myself just screwing around with for hours, which is made easier since you apparently unlock a rules-free "free play" mode in levels you've solved 3 different ways within the normal rules.

It's a simple concept, but also a pretty ambitious and incredibly novel one, and I will be supporting it with my dollar come September.

To illustrate the level of fun that I am anticipating from this title, I will end with an enthusiastic post from the NeoGAF forums.

How cool is that shit?

Anime is kind of like fish in that it is better the less "fishy" it is.

Locke's Quest is a Tower Defense game that has a good chunk of rpg mixed in. It's amazingly fun, in all honesty. The plot is there is a mechanomancer who HATES PEOPLE, so he made a self replicating army to kill everything, but they're fairly cute little robuts, and you're an engineer who's only job is to make, repair, and find new types of... TOWERS! Towers to defeat the robots and protect your town! It's really something to look into. Also, the character designs are WIN.

So, hey, guess what came out this week? If you said "Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story," you'd be right!

Also: Scribblenauts! Anyone other than me get a hold of it? I know Idran was looking forward to it. I was kind of hoping we could have a little "adventures in Scribblenauts" kind of discussion here, but the idea falls apart if no one actually has the game.

For example:

On the title screen, before you select your save file, you have access to a variety of free-play playground arenas, which are of course where I spent the first couple hours of my time with the game. First word: antimatter. It summons a big black ball of nothingness that sucks up and destroys anything in its immediate vicinity, and then is gone after about 3 seconds. Incidentally, this is the same behavior of a black hole.

My first experiment was to see how good Death is at killing things. Turns out: Pretty darn good, but not infallible. I summoned a shelter to hide in (even though you're invulnerable in a playground), and pit Death against some formidable opponents. He took out god, Cthulhu, and a wendigo before a vampire finally took him down. But not even Death itself can kill a cockroach.

Incidentally, a vial of holy water turned the vampire into a pile of ash. I just summoned it near him; didn't even have to throw it at him.

The first time I summoned a teleporter, it took me to an office, which was populated with various dudes with common names, which seems to fly in the face of the "no proper nouns" rule. Finding a Fifth Cell branded rally car (which is now my default terrestrial vehicle) confirmed my suspicion that these were actually members of the development team. One of them is a zombie chick who ended up getting loose and turning everyone else into zombie chicks. I'm really curious what the inside joke is there.

Watching the credits showed that there were several more dev team members with in-game models than I saw with the office, and they can all apparently be summoned in-game. Including the artist, who chooses to be represented as a t-rex with a red bandanna and fingerless (clawless?) gloves. You even get a merit for doing so, merits being sort of like achievements that get you bonus style points when you complete a level.

The artist differs from the standard t-rex in that his attacks are instant-kills, like summoning a flood or a meteor. Takes hits like Glass Joe, though. He can be tamed, if you're clever. You get a merit for that, too. And no, not even the artist can kill cockroaches.

A final experiment: I wanted to test if the game would actually render different dog breeds, or if all breeds would get you a generic default "dog" sprite. Turns out there's actually a pretty robust selection of unique breeds. Daschund, terrier, labrador, great dane, corgi, boxer, chihuahua, collie, poodle, afghan hound, dalmation, and a bunch of others. There's a some overlap, like boxer and st. bernard summoning the same sprite, but overall I was pretty impressed.

Anime is kind of like fish in that it is better the less "fishy" it is.

The power on the railgun disappoints me, and when I summon a rocket I goddamn expect it to move.

I wish I could tell the game whether I want the animal I summon to be friendly or not.

Grapple gun? Best thing ever. (Although the game only gets it right with "GRAPPLE")

I travel mostly by jetpack but occasionally by dune buggy or destrier.

It constitutes a number of items, but equipping Maxwell with a helm, plate armor, shield, and greatsword is SO WORTH IT.

Protection is usually provided to me by a hero, often equipped with a halberd.

"BOOMSTICK" just summons a regular shotgun, not a sawed-off one.

Summoning an ocean is fun.

My friend uses a shrink ray to devastating effect, apparently, but I haven't summoned one yet.

I would have played more since I got it, but Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 came out too and Darkknight and I have been spending time on that.

"Tell you what, Leto, I won't fight with you. Zeus' wives are pretty tough customers. You have my permission to boast openly that you have beaten the daylights out of me."-Hermes, the Iliad (Stanley Lombardo, translator) Book 21

Shrinking things? Huh. I haven't tried that yet, although I have gotten a lot of mileage out of various containers. You know, there's a merit for putting something in a container, and then putting that container inside a larger container. It may well be my favorite merit thus far.

I have to say, this game is giving me serious Katamari syndrome. After playing Katamari Damacy, every time I wandered outside I would consider what my approach would be if I were to start rolling stuff up. Gather some leaves, then some fenceposts, then trash cans, then people, cars, power poles... Now, any time I come across a unique or interesting word, I think "I wonder if I can summon that in Scribblenauts?" Can't stop.

There does seem to be some inconsistency in the game's library of mythological creatures, though. Sure you can summon hydras and frost giants and colossi and, according to Kotaku, "nuckelavee," whatever the fuck that is. You can even summon a gorgon who reacts appropriately to her own reflection. But no valkyrie? No one from the Norse or Greek pantheons, except Zeus for some reason? No dullahan, even though they could have just recycled the "headless horseman" sprite? I'm not really complaining, it's really impressive that I was able to summon a harpy and a siren and they weren't the same sprite. I just wish I had a better understanding of the inconsistencies. Although I suppose any mythological representations rely on the obscure mythological knowledge of the development team.

But no valkyrie? Seriously?

Anime is kind of like fish in that it is better the less "fishy" it is.

So, Super Scribblenauts is out, and it adds the incomparable power of adjectives to the already pretty impressive power of nouns. It also adds welcome D-pad controls for Maxwell. Anyone else looking to get this game?

My first crazy thing: I noticed there was a merit for "creating the smallest thing possible" or whatever, so I was looking around for synonyms for "small." One of the things I tried was "atomic walrus," since infinitesimal wasn't recognized. But instead of being atom-sized, the walrus started ticking and soon exploded, destroying everything in the stage.

Good times.

Edit: Second crazy thing: I was messing around with summoning various members of the development staff, and I ended up with Bailey, one of the programmers, who apparently chose to be rendered in-game wearing a hot dog costume, and Edison Yan, the illustrator, who is represented as a t-rex with a red bandanna. Eidson picks a fight because, well, he's a tyrannosaurus. Then I summoned Brittany, the executive director, who immediately stepped in and regulated, breaking up the fight and changing everyone's behavior to friendly.

How cool is that?

Anime is kind of like fish in that it is better the less "fishy" it is.